thecave


My hideout on the Internet

Ever feel stupid? Well I do right now. Last week I turned on my TV and poof…no picture. So I pressed the power button on the remote a few more times. Still no picture. Next I tried the power button on the TV unit and still no picture. The TV is toasted I thought

Not wanting to spend the money on a new TV, I decided to call for home service. 75 bucks for a home visit! But that is cheaper than a new TV. So after going almost a week without a TV or Amped! for Xbox for that matter, I scheduled an appointment for a service visit between 1 and 5 pm. Don’t you just love those service windows. 5:15 and no technician. Figures! So I call. He is running late and will be here within an hour. No problem. I am working anyway.

Finally the tech arrives. I buzz him into the building. We get ready to move the TV to the floor so he can take off the back of the set. I unplug the TV before the move and hear what sounds like the TV turning off! “No!” I think, “Don’t tell me all I needed to do was unplug the TV!” We move the TV to the floor but before the tech removes the back off the set I plug it back in. And guess what. The damn thing turned on!

75 bucks to have a tech watch me unplug and plug in the TV. Now talk about feeling stupid.

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I have been slacking on the weblog lately. What can I say? I have had too many things going on at the same time. Hopefully I will find the time to start making new posts.

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This weekend’s geek out weekend involved setting up a new remote development environment for myself. My plan was to roll out a hosted version of CVS (Concurrent Versions System) with secure access via SSH. I used OpenSSH on Windows from Network Simplicity, which was easy to install and configure. OpenSSH also includes SCP, a secure copy program, which I am now using to make backups of important information from my laptop to my file server. Totally sweet, I must say.

CVSNT was a bit of a challenge compared to OpenSSH but I did get it installed and running. The final step was to provide remote access to my CVS repository through a secure tunnel using SSH. This has proven to be very challenge and I have yet to finish this goal. I have search the Net over and have learned many others have had the same problems. This is preventing me from building the desired remote development environment, which means I must continue using VPN access to my Visual Source Safe repository.

Not all is lost though. I learned a lot about security, secure access, PKI, OpenSSH and such. And I have a easy to use, fast, secure process for backing up files from my laptop. I am not giving up on the challenge either. I will try again in a couple of weeks when I have more time.

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After spending the last few hours trying to access CVS repository stored on Windows 2000 through SSH, I finally give up. My final conclusion is the CVSNT does not work SSH when CVSNT is on the server-side. From all I have read and seen, CVSNT with SSH works fine with the CVS server is some flavor of Unix. This bums me out because I really don’t care to install Linux at home and I would like to use TortoiseCVS as my WinCVS GUI client.

All is not lost though. I think I can use another WinCVS to access my CVS repository. I was able to successfully access it with the CVS command line using SSPI for Windows authentication. And by using the -x, you can ensure that the network traffic is encrypted. Still, I would rather use SSH.

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I’m back from Jamaica and Memphis and back into .NET. This morning I learned how easy it is to internationalization your ASP.NET applications. The .NET SDK has a simple to follow walk through explaining how to create and use string resource files and satellite assemblies. Having built web-based applications that support multiple languages before, I really appreciate how simple it is to internationalize ASP.NET applications.

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I am once again trying to e-mail post feature of blogger.com. I really like the idea of this feature but I have been experiencing problems with it in the past. I just noticed a series of tests were finally posted to my weblog weeks after the messages were originally sent. Hopefully that problem has been fix.

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Congratulations to my sister Renay and her new husband Tommy, who were married earlier today. It is really hard to believe my little sister has become a beautiful young lady. I wish the two of them total happiness in their new life as husband and wife. And a special “good luck” to Tommy who is going to need it. Just joking, Renay. I love you both.

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Not like anyone really cares, but I am heading out of town again. KC last weekend. NYC this week. And early tomorrow Melanie and I will be heading off to Jamaica for some fun in the sun. We will be stopping over in Memphis mid-week to visit with friends and family, and to watch my sister get married. It’s hard to believe she is not a kid any more.

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After being grounded in New York for the last few weeks, I am finally taking a trip. Melanie and I are heading to Kansas City to visit my friends Darren and Jeff. Should be a great weekend.

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For those wondering, there was an explosion on West 19th Street between 6 and 7 Avenues. I work a few blocks away. I am fine and unaffected by the incident. Thanks to those like Renay who checked on me via e-mail and phone.

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